SHIVANGI DESHWAL
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Little Sister App, Prevention of Violence against Women and Children, SNEHA
Date
2019
Location
Mumbai
Program Coordinator
• Responsible for revamping the user interface of the LS app to women-centred design
• Planning and overseeing of Data Reporting and monitoring of Little Sister App, a crisis
intervention App that captures real-time violence and provides immediate psycho-social and legal support to survivors of Domestic violence in slums of Dharavi and Govandi, Mumbai (10 clusters with each Cluster having 500 households)
• Daily screening and follow up of high-risk cases of violence through Little Sister dashboard
• Case Coordination: Devising strategies to increase the reporting of cases of violence at counselling centre through community outreach
• Capacity building: Designing innovative need-based participatory training/ workshop to build perspective on violence against women for Staff and community volunteers
• Supervision and end-to-end coordination of field team, which includes Community officers, Program officers and Community volunteers
• Operational Lead for procurement, logistics, finance, HR, administration and management of Little Sister Team
• Campaign Management: Ideating and implementation of campaigns on violence against women such as 16 Days of Activism (Theatre of Oppressed used as a technique for community-based education with community volunteers)
• Group work: Feminist consciousness-raising, feminist leadership, Movement building with women community volunteer group using tools such as theatre, campaign and protests, poetry and prose writing
This app aims to be an accessible, efficient way to teach young women how to pick up on initial signs of abuse in their community and properly report it.
These trained women record videos of abuse or file reports through the app, which then contacts SNEHA, the proper authorities or healthcare workers to help a woman in need. Users of the app can choose to either record a video (which instantly enables location tracking through the app) or file formal reports detailing the gender-based violence they witnessed. The app has been successful in spreading awareness about preliminary and continued signs of domestic violence, as well as uplifting women to help other women.
The sense of community given to women in need from other women using the app will encourage victims to seek institutional help. The app aims to give their stories credibility to police and authorities. The women trained through The Little Sister App bolster the voices of survivors and encourage and support them when no one else will.
When 52% of women in India still condone domestic violence, the kind of awareness and support garnered by this app for women being abused is crucial to fighting domestic violence in India. It helps spread awareness about domestic violence and encourages more women to speak out against it. It also helps victims know they are not alone in seeking to end their abuse.
Ultimately, the intervention and support this app fosters are saving women’s lives by spreading awareness about gender-based violence. It also gives survivors rare reinforcement from other women in their community to stand up to their abusers.